In 2011, the CEOs of oil companies operating in the tar sands were found guilty of ecocide in a mock trial staged by the Eradicating Ecocide Global Initiative. The trial was part of British lawyer Polly Higgins’ campaign to have ecocide recognized as an international crime by the United Nations. The UN already acknowledges “widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment” as a war crime in the Rome Statute, but there’s no peacetime equivalent.

Polly Higgins' TEDxExeter talk on Ecocide

In Canada, the David Suzuki Foundation and Ecojustice are currently fighting to have the right to a healthy environment enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. About 100 other countries’ constitutions have already recognized this right, but Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government has gone the opposite direction, chipping away at environmental protections, research and programs over the last seven years.

Harper has been Canada’s worst prime minister from an environmental perspective, says David Boyd, lawyer and author of The Right to a Healthy Environment. He argues that Canadians have failed in their responsibility to hold Harper accountable by re-electing him, “eroding our reputation as a green nation.”

Boyd says that if the Right to a Healthy Environment campaign is successful, we’ll have more opportunity than elections to ensure accountability. “Non-regression,” a common principle in countries recognizing environmental rights, sets existing standards as “a baseline that can only be improved, and not weakened,” explains Boyd. “Thus, the recent weakening of key Canadian environmental laws ... would have been unconstitutional!”

Is the Harper administration guilty of ecocide? You be the judge. Review the evidence and deliver your verdict below.

New January 2014: After seven out of nine Department of Fisheries and Oceans libraries were closed in 2013, decades of public research documents the government claimed would be digitized were dumped in the garbage, sent straight to landfills or even burned, according to numerous reports from government scientists. Affected institutions inlude the Freshwater Institute library in Winnipeg; the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Centre in St. John's, Newfoundland and the St. Andrews Biological Station (SABS) in New Brunswick, where Rachel Carson conducted research for Silent Spring. The destroyed documents included critical baseline data from up to 100 years ago.

New January 2015: Environment Canada is accused of attempting to halt further investigations after the Commission of Environmental Co-operation, a part of NAFTA, was called to action to find out whether tailings ponds in Alberta are leaking into nearby water sources, thus breaking Canada's Federal Fisheries Act.

The charge: Preventing knowledge from reaching the public by muzzling government scientists.

A lengthy 2008 guide to “Meeting the Media” instructs DFO employees to “refer to the Department or the Government in your answers and do not use the personal pronoun ‘I’. After all you’re a DFO spokesperson and not an opinionated commentator.” (The guide is included in a report from Democracy Watch.)

In April 2013, the DFO required scientists working on a joint Canada-US Arctic research project to sign an exhaustive confidentiality agreement. (Some of the US scientists, including University of Delaware oceanographer Andreas Muenchow, refused.)

The new Library and Archives Canada code of conduct, released in March 2013, prohibits employees from participating in professional conferences, teaching and other “personal activities” without permission and adherence to strict criteria, including that the subject matter not be “related to the mandate or activities of LAC.” The mandate of the LAC is “to facilitate co-operation among communities involved in the acquisition, preservation and diffusion of knowledge.” In other words, the LAC is not allowed to fulfill its own mandate.

Canada withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol in December 2011, sidestepping an estimated $14-billion in penalties for noncompliance with reducing emissions targets below 1990 levels. A much easier federal target of 17 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020 was announced.

NEW OCTOBER 2014: The samereport revealed that a draft of emissions regulations for the oil and gas sector promised in 2006 – and crucial to meeting fast-approaching reduction targets – has been ready for a year, but no public consultation has taken place. The bulk of consultation so far has been with industry and one province (three guesses which one...).

The charge: Limiting scientists’ ability to provide perspective by reducing environmental research and think tank funding.

New March 2014: The Canada Centre for Inland Waters in Burlington, ON is down to 40 scientists as of January 2014, from 63 in 2012. Researchers here study topics like pollution, toxicity and climate change in the Great Lakes area and beyond. Many of them have been reassigned to study the Alberta oil sands, and scientists say important research on the Great Lakes environment and public health is being compromised.

The charge: Undermining conservation and monitoring efforts by cutting funding, staff and programs.

The evidence:

The 2011-2012 Environment Canada budget was reduced by $222.2-million over the previous year and 1,211 jobs were cut. Among the hardest-hit programs were Climate Change and Clean Air, Weather and Environmental Services, Water Resources and Internal Services, the Action Plan on Clean Water and the Federal Contaminated Sites Action Plan. The Chemicals Management Plan, the Clean Air Agenda and the Air Quality Health Index and the Species at Risk programs were eliminated.

NEW OCTOBER 2014: A report from Canada’s Environment Commissioner found delays in Joint Oil Sands Monitoring (JOSM) program initiatives, no concrete plans for monitoring beyond 2015 and that one of two emissions reduction committees hasn't met since 2011.

The charge: Obstructing and threatening environmental education and advocacy efforts.

New February 2014: The CBC released a list of seven environmental groups being audited by the CRA: The David Suzuki Foundation, Tides Canada, West Coast Environmental Law, The Pembina Foundation, Environmental Defence, Equiterre and Ecology Action Centre. John Bennett of Sierra Club Canada called it "a war against the sector." Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has said he's considering far stricter rules about charities using any funds for anything political (currently 10% of spending can go to non-partisan advocacy efforts). Complaints from pro-oil-sands group Ethical Oil are likely behind at least some of the audits. Ethical Oil is believed to be funded largely by industry groups and was founded by Alykhan Velshi, now director of issues management for Harper.Note: 10 per cent of those organizations' budgets combined would be $4.8-million – about the same amount Enbridge spent on just one Northern Gateway campaign in 2012.

Laura is a past A\J managing editor. She has an MA in Communication Studies from Wilfrid Laurier University, is an organizing aficionado, lackadaisical gardener, and former musical theatre producer. @inhabitings